Oakland police monitor finds officers used force without reporting it

Oakland police chief Anne Kirkpatrick, left, speaks as Oakland assistant chief Leronne Armstrong and Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt listen, during a town hall meeting held at Laney College in Oakland, Calif., on Monday July 19, 2018.

Photo: Michael Short / Special to The Chronicle

The independent monitor overseeing reforms in the Oakland Police Department found additional evidence that officers pointed their guns at suspects or used force on them without reporting their actions as required.

Court-appointed monitor Robert Warshaw said that in a sampling of cases he reviewed, all uses of force by police officers were warranted and in line with department policy. It was the lack of reporting their actions that violated the rules, he wrote in a court filing this week.

Skeptical of the “unexplained reduction,” Warshaw several months ago embarked on a review of arrest reports that includes watching body-camera footage to see if interactions happened as police officers said they did.

Warshaw, a former police chief of Rochester, New York, and deputy drug czar under President Bill Clinton, said he watched videos from 38 cases, chosen because they were likely to have involved tangling with suspects, even though no force was reportedly used.

In 14 cases — more than a third — officers did, in fact, get physical with people they were trying to arrest, Warshaw said. Videos showed six officers pointing their guns at suspects — considered a use of force that should be reported under department policy. In six cases, officers also failed to activate their cameras during the actual arrest, according to the review.

“The Oakland Police Department is committed to fair and constitutional policing and will continue to work with the federal court and the monitoring team to implement sustainable reforms,” police spokeswoman Felicia Aisthorpe said in an email.

It’s not the first time in recent weeks that Warshaw has found inconsistencies and omissions.

His first audit, in September, turned up six out of 29 cases in which officers pointed firearms or got physical with suspects but did not report their actions. The next one, earlier this month, found 11 in 40.

The monitor called his latest findings “troubling.” The accompanying arrest reports said “no force was used or witnessed,” which Warshaw called “inaccurate, boilerplate” language and “a serious misrepresentation.”

“It is not clear whether these deficiencies result from supervisory direction or a lack thereof, a misinterpretation of OPD policy, or other reasons,” Warshaw wrote. “However, OPD must definitively determine this to assure confidence in the accuracy of its force data.”

The department’s inspector general opened its own review, but Warshaw had problems with that, too. He said the internal watchdog attributed part of the drop in force reporting to a lack of clarity on what’s considered intentionally pointing a firearm at someone.

Warshaw disagreed. He said the “policy appears clear on this issue.” Pointing a gun above a 45-degree angle, he notes, is a reportable use of force, according to department rules.

“Our review suggests the need for a more broadly based inquiry and consideration of corrective measures to include policy revisions, training, and intervention where appropriate,” Warshaw said in the report.

The probe has added another complication to the city’s 15-year-old reform program that stemmed from the Riders scandal, in which a group of officers in West Oakland were accused of beating residents and planting evidence. A civil settlement in the case laid out dozens of tasks that had to be completed before the Police Department could emerge from federal court oversight.

Kimberly Veklerov covers Oakland and the greater East Bay for The San Francisco Chronicle. She joined The Chronicle in 2015 after graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in economics. Previously, she served as the editor in chief and president of the Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student newspaper.